


Mutually Assured Destruction

by interstellarSpider



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-03-15 23:54:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3466754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interstellarSpider/pseuds/interstellarSpider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While holed up in his hotel room reviewing camera footage, Jay finds something unexpected.</p><p>Set between the posting of Entry #36 and Entry #37.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mutually Assured Destruction

_Right from the start I was stabbed in the heart._

Jay couldn't believe what he was seeing. After over three hours spent sorting, viewing, and re-viewing the tapes he had salvaged from the hotel safe, all that he had managed to get for his effort was a stiff neck, an empty, queasy feeling in his stomach, and a tape whose footage might have been promising except that the last half hour had consisted of nothing but watching himself and Alex walk through some nondescript woods. Just walking and walking and walking but not actually _saying_ anything to each other, even during those brief moments when they were talking.   
  
Not for the first time, Jay wished he could leap through the screen and demand answers – from himself, from Alex, from the whole damn situation. The urge to throw up his hands and invite creeping oblivion was fast becoming familiar.   
  
After fifteen more minutes of shots like something out of the world's most disappointing, frustrating nature program, Jay had finally seen enough. Removing the tape from the camera, he leaned back in his chair, scrubbing his hands over his face and back through his hair hard enough that he could feel it sticking up in places.   
  
He should get his hair cut.   
  
He should get something to eat.

He should change his name and move out of state.

His stomach only endorsed one of those suggestions. The pleasure of scarfing down some candy bars and a gas station sandwich of dubious origin aside, Jay wasn't sure if he was up for the anxiety-bordering-on-panic leaving his new location so often presented him with anymore. Just the thought of it was enough to start building a tight, painful pressure behind his eyes that would doubtlessly bloom into a full-blown tension headache soon. Hoping to divert the need for another Ibuprofen – he understood, now, what the bottle of pills had been doing in his bag - Jay picked up another tape, this time from a smaller stack situated at the other end of the battered hotel table. This was the footage from his own room, which he now recorded and examined with a regularity bordering on pathological, although he didn't know what he expected to find. Slotting the tape into place and turning the camera back on, Jay had a moment to register the familiar, hair-raising, high-pitched crackle of audio distortion before the image on the screen wholly captured his attention.   
  
In retrospect he was glad his stomach was empty as it immediately plummeted to the soles of his feet.

Wide eyes ringed in black peered out from the static-ridden screen. Jay, despite his exhaustion, felt his heart jackhammer and his whole body go cold. He was suddenly and disconcertingly reminded of the eyes of a rabid coyote he had seen in the woods. The fact that he was now able to put a name to the person behind the mask, that beyond all reason this was _Tim_ , the guy that could always be counted on for sarcastic remarks and stupid t-shirts during those three long-ago months of filming, only made the feeling in his stomach lurch from queasy to nauseated. His skin grew tight and prickled with a rush of adrenaline, fight or flight mode engaged despite his body running on empty. Jay glanced around his small hotel room. From where he was sitting he could easily see the deadbolt that he locked and re-locked and compulsively checked several times a day, the chair that he braced against the doorknob. The latches were turned on every window and his heavy flashlight was long since removed from his bag and tucked under his pillow. Despite all of these precautions he still couldn't shake the dreadful anticipation welling up in his chest, as if he expected to catch those same empty eyes staring back at him from behind his shoulder, just out of view.  
  
Looking around confirmed there was no one in the room but him. Of course, it was impossible... But as he turned back to the camera feed, watching through the jarring effect of frequent visual tearing as Tim moved from standing in front of the camera to standing at the foot of the bed where Jay lay sleeping, the sinking feeling in his stomach and the headache pounding against his temples served as a reminder that everything about this situation should have been impossible.

What the tape revealed next forced Jay to re-evaluate even that simple of an assessment. Maybe even the word 'impossible' was too optimistic. Maybe his entire life was destined to be a mash-up of the bizarre and insane. The video feed jumped, the audio distortion spiked to some unbearable pitch meant for communicating with dogs and air traffic control, and when it had dissipated Tim was leaning over Jay's sleeping body, knees on either side of his waist. That disturbing mask was pressed as close against his face as it had been against the camera just a moment ago.

Jay flinched as if he could feel cool plastic touching his skin, instinctively bracing himself even as he sat at the table, waiting for Tim to turn violent despite the fact that Jay could remember waking up that morning without a scratch on him. He could see how the hunched figure was still favoring one leg. He had spent long, uneasy nights with that horrible scream in his ears and the arc of that slab of concrete playing behind his eyes. He recalled the knife smeared with Alex's blood and expected to see its shine at any moment – but when Tim reached out and ran his fingertips down the side of his face instead, Jay felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room.

Because Jay's life was a loop of unhappiness, the video feed chose that very moment to become steady and the audio crystal clear. Jay could see with unwanted clarity how Tim's fingers first brushed just above the arch of one of his eyebrows, then moved gently down along his eyelashes and the curve of his cheek. How his pinky finger snagged at the corner of Jay's mouth. He could hear the cheap, stiff hotel blankets through the tiny camera speakers as he watched himself shift in his sleep, but Tim seemed totally unconcerned. As Jay watched, too dumbstruck with disbelief to even be horrified, Tim's fingertips continued to meander down Jay's jaw, neck, and chest while, with his other hand, he started running his fingers through Jay's hair, almost as if he was... No, it was too weird to think that Tim could be _petting_ him. In some distant, shell-shocked part of his mind Jay was deeply thankful that he always went to bed fully-clothed.  
  
And then he woke up.

Both in the video and sitting in the relative security of his dark hotel room, Jay startled, as if through time and space he had been suddenly pierced by a live wire. After taking a moment to recover Jay leaned closer to the screen, not sure what to think. It was clear that, as insane as it seemed, his eyes were now wide open. The occasional tear interrupted the footage's progress as he watched Tim's hands pull away, fingers flexing, curling and uncurling like some sort of nervous tic in slow motion. Behind the lifeless mask, Tim seemed to take a moment of his own, head tilting to one side, before reaching out again.

Jay found himself watching the movement of Tim's hands with rapt attention. Despite the truly creepy situation, a sick sort of anticipation welled up in his chest as Tim's broad hands moved closer and closer to his face. Fingers skimmed over his lips just as they parted and his own sleep-hoarse voice whispered something that Jay could barely discern through the shitty speakers and a low, buzzing drone that was steadily gathering in volume.  
  
“What--”

One of Tim's hands came down firmly over his eyes, the recording skipped and warped and fragmented, and the tape ended. Jay moved without having to think, fumbling for the next tape in his stack, distractedly glancing at the date and time penned on the front before switching it out...  
  
He was laying on his back fast asleep in his bed, not a hair out of place. According to the time stamp in the corner of the video feed, nearly an hour had passed by, completely unrecorded. Jay sucked in a deep breath, feeling shaky and sick as he turned off the camera feed. His head was pounding as he sat back in his chair, trying to wrap his mind around what he had just seen.

He only gradually realized that his head wasn't the only part of his body that was pounding. He was well on his way to getting hard, and as he shifted, trying to ease the pressure, his jeans pinched uncomfortably.   
  
How could this have happened? How could Tim have found him again so soon? Why would he... interact with him like that when every other time they'd come into contact Jay was at least 95% sure he'd been fighting for his life? He had been as careful as he could after the hotel, after Jessica and the safe full of tapes. He hardly left whatever room he rented and never stayed in the same place for more than a few nights, so how...

Hunching somewhat painfully in his chair, Jay ran his hands through his hair, a gesture borne of frustration and exhaustion that was quickly becoming habitual, especially as the frustration and exhaustion in his life seemed determined to keep mounting. But this time he froze halfway through the motion, feeling at once his own hands and a vague, half-remembered sensation.

Broad hands running through his hair, careful yet possessive, and the pressure of nails scratching along his scalp.

As if the situation couldn't have been any more surreal, Jay felt his cock distinctly twitch against the fabric of his jeans. He took a few slow, deep breaths, then logged onto his Twitter account, posting a few short sentences that were, he felt, appropriately vague when it came to exactly what he had seen tonight. There wasn't any reason anyone needed to know what he had found. Hell, Jay wasn't sure that _he_ wanted to know.   
  
He reached over and picked up Alex's camera. He had gotten into the habit recently of wanting to have something recording him, even when he was just reviewing old tapes and security footage. He had been pretty successful thus far at not wondering how objectively crazy this meant his life had become, that he needed to have a camera recording him every moment of the day in case he found himself in a hotel months from now with no idea what had happened to him. Again.   
  
Jay turned that camera off too.   
  
Thumbing open the button of his jeans, Jay slipped his hand past the waistband of his pants, gripping his cock with a dry palm. The drag of skin against skin was almost painful, but it wasn't enough to stop images of Tim and that horribly blank mask from filling his mind. Now that he wanted to it was easy for Jay to recall, or imagine - god how he hoped he was imagining all of this – the touch of Tim's hands on his body, the pressure from his legs where they hadn't quite pressed against his hips.   
  
Letting his head fall back, Jay pictured the way Tim had looked bent over him, his long, slow hands the only point of contact between them. But in the scene that played out in his mind, Jay was no longer asleep. He was free to lift his head up, to press his lips against that thin, flimsy, but still impenetrable mask. The cool plastic slid over his lips before Tim pressed back too hard, smashing Jay's lips against his teeth so that he was forced to part them, his tongue slipping over the raised imitation of a mouth like he could tongue the black marker off of it, swallow it down, slip past the plastic and lick his way into Tim's warm, wet mouth. Those insistent hands were moving up and down his body in a way that, even in Jay's fantasy, gave the impression not of comfort or sensuality but of a mind permanently stunned and fragmented, needing to check that the skin it had touched just a moment ago hadn't set itself into some new and impossible configuration. Everywhere his fingers skimmed left goosebumps behind. Tim's eyes, flat with barely restrained madness and shining like something diseased, flashed through Jay's mind. He groaned helplessly as his hand sped up in response, the movements coming more easily as pre-come gathered at the head of his cock.

Spreading his legs as wide as his jeans - half undone and caught around his knees - would allow, Jay let his free hand travel up his chest and neck, in much the same way Tim had done just before the tape cut out. Instead of laying the palm of his hand over his eyes, Jay slipped his own fingers into his mouth. He sucked at them hard, imagining Tim's eyes locked on his, pinning him in place as he moved his fingers in and out of Jay's mouth. This time Jay wasn't surprised by the jolt of pleasure and fear that made his heart race and his cock jerk in his hand, but his resulting moan was one of frustration. It wasn't enough.

Far past the point of being able to or even wanting to rationalize his own thoughts, Jay imagined taking Tim's hand by the wrist. He pictured the heavy weight and heat of it, the coarse feeling of wiry hair against the palm of his hand. He continued sucking at Tim's imagined fingers even as he drew them from his mouth. He licked a long, broad stripe up the middle of Tim's palm, repeatedly, running his tongue along the curve of the heel of Tim's hand and the webbing of his fingers until it was glistening and wet all over. There was a subtle shift in tension as Jay sat up, holding Tim's gaze with purpose, watching as his sharp eyes grew half-lidded and glazed. They were no less dangerous than they had been when they were wordlessly pinning Jay to his back, and that knowledge made a shiver run up his spine. Jay slotted his knee against Tim's growing erection, pressing until he could see the flutter of Tim's eyelashes in the poorly-lit hotel room and the way his chest began to rise and fall a little harder, a little faster.

Then he neatly flipped their positions, pressing Tim down into the hotel mattress. Bearing his weight against Tim's broad shoulders he let their hips settle flush together. Tim's hand was still slick and warm with spit and sweat, and Jay guided it to his aching cock, watching that expressionless mask for some sign of... of consent, of disapproval, of desire, anything. He was rewarded when Tim tried to jerk his hand away just as Jay started to slide his heavy cock through the loose grasp of Tim's fingers. Jay refused to let go of Tim's wrist, and Tim refused to move his fingers, to give Jay what he wanted – but Tim's other arm was free, his legs were partially pinned by Jay's weight on his hips but not immobilized, and Tim wasn't fighting. Jay knew he could. There was a violent, unhinged look in his eyes again, like a rabid animal just before it bites – but he wasn't striking out.  
  
They sat in that moment together, balanced on the edge of some precipice, a gulf as wide, cold, and alien as an unfamiliar night sky spreading out between them -   
  
“Come on, Tim.”   
  
His body was humming and his face was flushed. Jay didn't even realize he had spoken out loud. Not commanding, not begging. Quiet, almost intimate, like they were the only two people in the world.

Something came alive, then, in Tim's eyes. Something that wasn't a product of delirium or psychosis, something that didn't make Jay want to instinctively grab for the nearest blunt object. Tim tightened his fingers around Jay's cock, squeezing when it jerked against his palm, a thumb pressing against the underside of his shaft, rubbing over the slick head. Jay moaned, driving his hips forward helplessly – then again, and again, fucking into Tim's hand. Heat built in his abdomen, curling low at the base of his spine, and Jay imagined settling his weight back against Tim's hips, imagined the answering heat and hardness of Tim's cock shoving up against his ass through Tim's jeans. Even when he came all over Tim's fist and stomach he didn't stop, his balls drawing up against his body as he kept grinding himself down on Tim's cock. In Jay's head, Tim's moan was low and quiet when he finally came, grunting and making harsh panting sounds behind his mask.

Jay jerked off one more time that night after watching the footage again, then passed out slumped on the table amongst his laptop and tapes – literally fell unconscious, too drained and exhausted to even stand up and fall into bed.  
  
He woke up with the cheap hotel comforter pulled up to his chin, his head resting on a pillow only nominally softer than the surface of the desk had been. Come was dried, itchy and uncomfortable where it had smeared inside his boxers and down his inner thighs. Jay stumbled out of bed and into the tiny bathroom, throwing on the light and wincing sleepily at the harsh contrast it made with the early morning-slash-late evening gloom filtering in through the heavy curtains.   
  
Then he blinked a few more times, turned the light off, and shucked his pants and boxers all in one go as he fumbled with the chest camera still mounted on its tripod. After a moment the little red light turned on, and he collapsed back into bed.   
  
In the bathroom, a message was smudged on the surface of the mirror.

 **_sle_ **  
**_ep_ **  
**_mo_ **  
**_re_ **

Jay settled underneath the covers, and for the first time in a long time felt at ease.


End file.
